The Father Who Provides

Our understanding of a father deeply shapes our identity and faith. In this series, we’ll explore how earthly fathers have impacted us, find healing for the places we’ve been hurt, and encounter God as the perfect Father who fully loves, restores, and defines who we are—so that His love overflows into the lives of others.

Transcript

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Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stanford, Connecticut. The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.

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This can be found on page 1033 of your Pew Bible. In this passage, Jesus teaches about the importance of asking our Heavenly Father in prayer to provide for our needs. Christians should go boldly before God with any need they face. For God is more gracious than any human neighbor. A reading from Luke chapter 11, beginning with the fifth verse. And he said to them, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer from within, Do not bother me, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything, because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead give him a serpent, or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word.

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And it consists of hundreds of narratives and thousands of storylines. And the brilliance in this composition of scriptures is that these storytellers, these storytellers, they use converging narratives within the biblical storylines to help its readers to help us see ourselves in a narrative. See ourselves in a story. Those narratives seek to highlight God's magnificent love and his pursuit of us. In the profession of public relations, aka P R, as some would know it, public relations professionals are paid often handsomely to spin a story and create out of that story a new narrative that gives new definition to the same story. When they spin a story, the story doesn't change. Only the narrative about the story does. The purpose of the spin is to strategically reshape the presentation of information to create a particular perception or a narrative, often to influence public opinion, us, or protect the client's image. Somewhere over the centuries, postmodernism, sprinkle in some new atheism, Eastern religious, western religious thought, the enemy has perfected the spin. And he's spun a new narrative on the Bible. The enemy of your soul and mine, Satan, his goal is to manipulate the story of God, to change the public's perception of the Bible, and to spin us all out of the narrative. So now new false narratives have arisen. In his demonic PR campaign, you'll hear things like the Bible's lofty and it has these grandiose stories, and I think most of them are mythical. You'll hear people say the Bible has some good stuff in it, but ultimately it helps me become my highest self. It helps me to do the most moral good in this world. World-renowned atheist scientists, we call him a world-renowned atheist, but he was really a brilliant scientist, Richard Dawkins, and you've probably heard this before. He refers to himself as a cultural Christian. And he was doing that talking about how he enjoys the Christian rhythms of Christmas. But he's enjoying the Christian rhythms of Christmas and calling himself a cultural Christian while simultaneously not believing a word of the Christian faith. He doesn't see the narrative of God, he doesn't see himself in it. And sometimes, even though we believe in Jesus, we have this disembodied and detached view of our faith where we'll look at Jesus, but we won't engage in a storyline. However, that's not the reality that God has for you. That's not the God narrative for you. I believe the most present and effective way to keep us active in the storylines of God, to keep us present in the God narrative is through prayer and mission. A life of prayer that flows into mission and a life of mission that beckons us to pray. In fact, all work, all of our professions should compel us to pray. And all prayer should compel us to work. That happens when the Holy Spirit blows in us into this life of mission God has called us to. And when we don't pray, it's hard to fully enjoy the mission. That's why prayerlessness is one of the most sneaky yet effective tools of the enemy because it decreases our view of God over time. It slowly but surely diminishes how we see the story of God. I like to call that the sin of diminishing returns. In the economic principle, the law of diminishing returns, it says that if you increase labor and if you increase your work, maybe your mission, so as it were, and if you increase your tools without increasing your resources or the factors that contribute to that work, any additional input you make eventually becomes inefficient. Your future efforts become null and void. In the same way, the sin of diminishing returns or prayerlessness says if I continually increase my Christian efforts, my Christian service, my morally good work, but I keep my prayer life here, even the same way it was when I got saved, what happens as a Christian is we begin to see the mission of Jesus differently. And then the Christian life becomes production without power. I know it's hard to hear. I know this isn't what our itching ears sometimes want to hear on a Sunday morning. But I know that you know, that we know we need to hear this. And I want to encourage you. And I want to declare over you in the name of Jesus, with the authority that God has given to me by the Holy Spirit, that the spin stops today. So here's a reality check. The goal is not to create a to-do list or a bunch of alarms to set on our phones that's gonna make us somehow become better at prayer and living on mission for God. Messages like these are necessary because they confront us with a reality that the world often won't tell us. We can't do anything without God. We can't do anything without Jesus and through his Holy Spirit, that's what's gonna draw us deeper into him and into communion, to sup with him, to hear from him, to learn from him, and to glean from our Father. So before we go any further, I would love to just seek Jesus together, take a moment to set, to ask God to set the dial of our understanding so that we can hear what he's urging us to say this morning. If you feel compelled to do so, if you sense God saying that, would you bow your heads and close your eyes? I have a prayer prompt built on the Acts Prayer of Motto, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. And just repeat after me as you feel led of the Holy Spirit. God Almighty, we acknowledge that the earth is yours and every single thing in it. We confess, we confess that we do not always put action behind what we believe about prayer. We thank you for this revelation, that you have gift wrapped for us in your word. We ask that you tune our hearts to hear your voice and make your mission come alive in us as we seek your face. In Jesus' name. Amen. In this first narrative in Luke chapter 11, I'm gonna focus in on verses 8 through 10. This is really a fourth, furthermore section on prayer. Jesus has already led the disciples through the Lord's prayer after they heard him praying and they asked him, Lord, teach us to pray. So he gives a deeper understanding on what prayer really is about. Here's what he says: I tell you, though this friend will not get up and give anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find, knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened. The key phrase here is impudence. Impudence. It's defined in the Hebrew as shameless persistence in prayer. But this is not a person who is so willing to go forward that they have no shame about it. This is shameless persistence that is speaking culturally of how a lack of generosity could bring shame upon a person who's being asked. Jewish rabbinical scholars say this about ancient biblical hospitality. In ancient Israel, hospitality was not merely a question of good manners, but a moral institution which grew out of the harsh desert and nomadic existence led by the people of Israel. The biblical customs of welcoming the wary travel and of receiving the stranger in one's midst was the matrix out of which hospitality and all its tributary aspects developed into a highly esteemed virtue in Jewish tradition. Hospitality, generosity was a big deal in this culture. So the social narrative that Jesus is highlighting and that Luke is painting here is that if a person being asked does not fulfill the need, they actually might fall into disrepute societally. Their reputation in this type of situation and their own social status might become negatively infected by a lack of generosity due to the persistence of the person asking. But this is not about us answering a call. That kind of hospitality is God's response to us when we shamelessly persist in prayer. That is the reputation that God has always had. That is the ancient but present narrative in the kingdom of God. God answers prayers, and we're to shamelessly persist in prayer. That shameless persistence, or that impudence, or from its root word, importunity, guess what that means? That means persistence, especially to the point of annoyance. Now I know that well because I'm a little brother. It was a joy to annoy my sister. And I see for my son it's a joy to annoy his, which I love it. It's God saying from his own mouth, you know, coming to someone often and always on matters of your heart and being annoying to a family member or friends on earth, that happens, but I will never be annoyed by you. That's the God narrative. That's how God moves in our story. Psalm 121, the writer records in verses 1 through 8, saying, I will lift my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, get this, behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither sleep nor slumber. The Lord is your keeper. Listen, God doesn't get tired. He's never weary of when we beckon and pursue him. It's God saying, Don't wait until you're in a jam. I know where all the jams are. Remember Pastor Chuck saying last week, consistency and trusting God through prayer creates a reservoir of confidence. It's like a spiritual trust fund, if it were. So that when you get in a jam and you will, when you hit a foxhole and you will, you'll know who is with you through that. Do you see yourself in that storyline? Do you see Jesus' invitation into a narrative of prayer that will change your life and your family's life forever? Importunity in prayer. But importunity sounds a lot like what word? Opportunity. Opportunity is defined as a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something, it presents itself. So an opportunity is the opposite of importunity. Importunity does not present itself. An impudence in prayer rejects the false narrative that I can do this on my own. It places us in the God sovereign story. In fact, importunity and prayer or impudence comes before the very things that we've already been seeking. It almost can initiate the very opportunities that we've been asking of the Lord. In his book, Mighty Prevailing Prayer, Wesley Duell writes this: Be expectant of God's revealed will for your prayer life. Be expectant of God's revealed will for your prayer life. When you live in the sphere of God's will, you can expect the Holy Spirit to unfold to you step by step the acts of obedience he desires from you and the prayers he desires to pray through you. I truly believe that. He then quotes Harry Jessup and says, The will of God is a sphere, the will of God is a sphere with distinct boundaries within which souls consciously dwell. Which also means souls are dwelling outside of the sphere. And wouldn't Satan have it that we as a people would see God as distant, as aloof? And then we often decide in advance of asking, you know what? I'm not even gonna pray about it. Don't allow the enemy to spin a false narrative and get you to believe that God doesn't answer prayer. That doesn't mean we pray and sit. That just means we pray and we refuse to worry and be captivated by anxiousness after we've done all we can. Paul talks about this in Ephesians chapter 6, one of my favorite verses and chapters in the Bible that explains really the posture that we take as we engage in spiritual warfare as Christians. Paul says in 6.13, Ephesians 6.13, therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all to stand, stand therefore. It's not the having done all to stand part that we have a problem with, it's the stand therefore part. Today, we're choosing to stand therefore. We're gonna execute shameless persistence in prayer with impudence as we pray to a God who's never tired or sleepy. Amen. And the second narrative highlighted here in Luke chapter 11, verses 11 to 13. Here's how it reads What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion. Now here's my how my ADD brain works. Is it a scrambled egg or is it a boiled egg? Is it just an egg that's not cooked yet? That's literally what I was thinking about. I think Chuck said to me, he your son said to me, Is this boil, is it's a scrambled egg? I said, okay, all right. Did they scramble eggs? Anyway. Then it goes on to say, if you then, talking about us, who are evil in our core nature, know how to give good gifts to your own children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask? Very interesting. We go from practical needs to a supernatural request. In Luke's narrative of the gospel, he builds a bridge between missional living and prayer by listing a series of events that lead up to this Jesus model of prayer in chapter 11. Jesus teaches them how to pray upon their request, and then he uses a story to invite the disciples into the God narrative by telling them what they should really be praying for. The Holy Spirit. Jesus feeds the 5,000, you see miraculous provision through one mission, through the mission. There's the transfiguration where he takes this small group of his disciples on a mountain, and they see that Jesus gets supernaturally encouraged, or at least that's what we believe was happening, before the mission, before his crucifixion. Jesus heals a boy, there's supernatural provision on the mission. The disciples want to be famous, they want to be great, as most of us would probably want to be in that situation of walking around with Jesus. When is my turn to become famous? And Jesus looks at them and says, Well, in order for you to be great, you must be the most humble. After all of this, after this teaching, showing his disciples step by step how to pray, he uses a story and he spins the narrative to help them see their need for the Spirit of God. Jesus himself is saying, You can use impudence, shameless persistence in prayer. And if you also know that you have the assurance of attention as you pray, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to you when you ask for it? The truth is, the Holy Spirit is the one that enables us to see ourselves in the story of God. It's the one that compels us, it's the one that draws us near, it's the one that empowers us. It's the one that fills us up with strength in order to live out the mission of God and becking and compel and remind us to pray. When Paul prayed for Christians in Ephesus, he prayed that God would open their eyes. He prayed that they would be enlightened. He says, He prays that God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ in Ephesians 1:17, 20, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, would give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, that the eyes of their understanding will be enlightened, that they would know what is the hope of their calling in Him, what is the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe. Do we see ourselves starting to come alive in the storyline? We want to be effective. We desire the Holy Spirit. And Lord, we finally want to release to you the anxiety and the pride and the emotional dispositions and roadblocks that are associated with us trying to do everything in our own efforts. Listen, it's okay to feel powerless. It's okay. It's okay to feel powerless if we continue to go to a God who is most powerful. So then, as you continue to go to him and seek his face, he pours out more and more and more of his Holy Spirit. And then you can come to him with confidence and execute the mission of God in spite of your feelings. That's what the power of God does. Holy Spirit activate. Holy Spirit activate. Y'all don't remember that? Holy, it was a meme. You guys don't use the internet. It's okay. What was the internet meme? Communicated, albeit jokingly, the most critical person we need to withstand the most wickedest intentions of Satan. Holy Spirit activate. So considering the narrative of your life, considering how the King of Kings Jesus has moved heaven and earth to speak to you, considering all of this, if the King of Kings in his glory with his train of glory, with his holiness and his righteousness with fire in his eyes and goodness and mercy resting on him, if he were to walk down this aisle into this room, what would you now ask of him? What would you ask of him? You know, sometimes we don't have the strength to pray for ourselves, and that's okay. But sometimes the person next to us can pray for us. So we're gonna do something real practical right now in this room, and we're gonna lay hands on one another. So I'm gonna give you a chance, if you're not near someone, to slide over, move next to someone. I'm gonna ask that you would take your hand and rest your hand on the shoulder of one of the brothers and sisters in the body of Christ near you. I'll give you some time to do that. And you're not gonna pray for yourself, you're gonna pray for the person who's you have a hand on. Some of us in this room, we've had so much we don't know how to receive. Break that in the name of Jesus. Some of us look at our problems, they say they think they're so small, and they think they're insignificant, and God is like, Well, give me that. I want that. So I'm gonna give a prayer prompt, and then you feel led to pray this specific concept, however, you feel led to. What we're gonna pray is that the Holy Spirit would fill this person afresh, would impart to them the fresh filling of the Holy Spirit so that they can be activated into the storyline of God, into the God narrative. Go ahead and pray. In Jesus' name. Amen. Above me, you're gonna see a couple slides. The first slide is the beginning of a journey of awakening and a beginning and being enlightened to the work that the Lord has for you. And we do that often in a practical way through our spiritual gifts assessment here at this church. It's a pathway, it's the beginning, it's the journey of how you can discover how God has wired you. And Pastor Gina has a unique way of taking that information, synthesizing it, and walking with you through the process of how you get active in the kingdom of God. So take out your phones, if you will. These are one of those things that we'd love everybody at Stanworth Church to be able to take this assessment and begin that journey of discovering how God has designed them. And for some of you, you already are serving, so this assessment, even if you haven't taken it, all it's gonna do is affirm what God has already been doing in you. I'll give you a minute to just scan that. The next slide is an opportunity that's pressing right now. Our students have had an overwhelming response to the missions trip that we do with ASP. It's the Appalachia Service Project, where they're gonna go to Clay County, West Virginia, to one of the most neglected areas in America. This annual trip is important because it gives students a chance to grow in their faith and it gives a chance for them to pray, fellowship, help to make people's homes safer, enrich a community just by their presence and serving and helping on projects there. But they're short leaders right now. They're short leaders because they've had a great and overwhelming response to the students' involvement. So if that's something you want to be engaged with, there's training for it. They'd be happy to welcome you on as a leader on that trip. Uh the trip is a few days. Please engage with that trip if you're willing to sign up and take that road trip with the students today. You know, I struggled with prayerlessness myself for a season for two years. Uh I found out in 2019 that my uh mother was her cancer had turned for the worse. Um I felt the Lord telling me, I'm gonna take her this time, Jelani. And wouldn't you have it? A year later, uh day before Thanksgiving, which is the only time of year that we went to visit my mom, she died in 2020. I didn't want to accept that I was upset with God. I would pray and I would journal. I mean, I would journal and I would read my Bible, but I wouldn't actually open my mouth and pray. And because my mom was private, I kept it private and I didn't even engage while she was still alive. But at some point during 2019, I just sent a big message out to a bunch of friends and I asked people to pray for me. They became a crutch around my brokenness. They became a cast around my brokenness, a crutch to hold me up. That's what you did for each other, and that's what the body of Christ is best at. Amen. Amen.

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